Thebes (third)
Thebes |next = Cydonia }} Thebes, alternatively called Ares' City, is a mission found in . Briefing Goals * Sanctuary to Ares * 50 people in Residence or better * 30 sheaves of Wheat for colony * 25 jugs of Olive Oil for colony Summary In this mission, you will build your first sanctuary, prepare an elite housing area and also set aside goods for your colony elsewhere in the empire. Constructing sanctuaries is a difficult, but very rewarding, effort for your city. When Ares Fortress is completed, it will provide you access to 16 mythological warriors belonging to Ares himself, which will help in later missions (of course, these Sparti and Guard can be enemies to you in some missions, but only in an adventure where Ares is unfriendly.). You are able to produce all the marble you need locally in Thebes, but you will have to import wood from a trade partner. As for Sculpture, you can either import it at great cost from a trade partner, or you can import bronze from Mount Pelion and make the Sculpture locally and more cheaply. Or, if you don't want to go to any expense in producing sculpture, you can simply wait for a large gift of the commodity to come from Calydon. Sanctuaries require the experience of artisans who are trained from an Artisan's Guild. If you are short on workers, now is a good time to increase the workforce: while a sanctuary can be completed with just one guild, it will take an immense amount of time, so you will want at least three guilds to make the sanctuary complete faster. Ares' Fortress requires 40 slabs of marble, 12 loads of wood and 2 sculpture, so you don't need a lot of artisans to complete it. While you work on the sanctuary to Ares, begin planning out a single elite housing block. Residence is the lowest level of elite housing and it only holds 6 people, so you would need a lot of elite housing just to reach the high target of 50 people. You can ease the burden of reaching this target by evolving the elite housing: you are able to supply the basic elite houses with armor created from imported bronze, which will evolve them into Mansions. If you want to evolve them further, you will need to make requests for Wine to a rival city, Eleusis, and as they are rivals to you, they can easily reject your requests. The requests to Eleusis are more than likely to succeed if you are able to win the City Games, which are held at random periods, usually after winning a number of Pan-Hellenic Games. With access to Wine, your elite housing will evolve to Manors, which holds 16 people: as long as you have 4 plots of housing, you will surpass the requirements of the mission. The only goals are to build elite housing and a sanctuary. The colony goals just require you to stockpile the required amount in Storehouses: once you are ready to move on, preferably with a large amount of money, just set aside the wheat and olive oil to progress to your colony! 03